Megan Gail Coles

The worst and longest Valentine's Day ever takes place in St. John's, Newfoundland, and in this incredible novel. Olive and Iris are two half Indigenous women from the poverty-stricken interior of the province who come to the city for better lives and meet with disaster via their connection to a self-centered foodie chef, his wealthy wife, and to violent and cowardly men from their hometown. Although told from many points of view, the center is Iris and her boss John's destructive affair, which brings out the worst in them, and as the evening winds up in a ferocious blizzard, all the lives that touch theirs, even those trying to prevent disaster, are on the verge of complete ruin. There is no way to abandon ship until you learn all there is to know about their pasts and futures. Winner of many literary awards in Canada, it is compelling and significant.

Quotes: "What doesn't kill her now will kill her later."

"Iris is nightly running internal damage-control analysis. She lies awake mapping out ways to stop lying awake."

"He doesn't mind gay people now, he just wishes they didn't all look so fit."

"There is nothing so tragic as a woman aware a man is filling her full of toxins while remaining powerless to stop it. It is a grotesque poisoning."

"Honesty would get everyone out of some lot of scrapes."

"There are nice couples in St. John's. There are men and women who love each other in Newfoundland. There is warmth and happiness, in the clear and understood. Some people still make love around here."… (mehr)

This is a difficult book to read because of its brutality -- people are mistreated and not valued because they are women, non-white, or gay. But it's worth it.

The author's ability to get into the hearts and minds of her characters, especially the two main female characters (Iris and Olive) is phenomenal. The story takes place in Newfoundland during a February snow storm. The sense of place, the flavour of local expressions and characters take you right into the setting, just as the exceptional character development makes you feel these are people you know well.

This is story-telling at it's best.… (mehr)

The Dedication of the book includes a warning: “This might hurt a little.” That is an understatement! By the time I reached the end of the book, I was emotionally exhausted. But to call this book, with its examination of wounded people and shattered lives, less than brilliant would also be an understatement.

The setting is St. John’s, Newfoundland, on Valentine’s Day; most events take place in an upscale restaurant called The Hazel. The first section, entitled “Prep”, introduces a number of characters: Iris, the hostess at the restaurant, wants to end the destructive affair she has been having with John, the married, predatory chef of the restaurant; Olive, Iris’ friend, is the product of a tragic past and the foster care system and has an equally tragic present; Georgina, John’s wife and the owner of the restaurant, craves power and prestige; Calv, an acquaintance of Olive, cannot escape a toxic friendship; and Damian, a server in the restaurant, is a self-loathing gay man. The pace of this first part is slow; the focus is on developing the backgrounds and emotional lives of these characters. Initially, keeping the characters straight is difficult but readers should persevere.

In the second part, entitled “Lunch”, relationships among characters are further clarified and the storylines of the various characters are brought together. Tension grows as more and more people arrive at The Hazel. Just as a winter storm develops outdoors, more than one confrontation is inevitable indoors. Indeed, the third and final section (“Dinner”) is the most intense and dramatic.

The lives of women receive special attention, Iris and Olive more than other characters. They have experienced poverty, violence, abandonment, and misogyny. Women are in fact the small game mentioned in the title, often the victims of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse. The author calls out the men who abuse and also those who do nothing to stop the abuse. She also rails against women who defend an offender: “He is loved because we love him and therefore he is good and not bad.” She attacks women who act as enablers by attacking women who choose to speak up against their abusers.

There is such depth to the characters that readers come to completely understand why someone does what he/she does. A character may make a bad decision, but the author reveals a character’s motivations and rationalizations in such detail that a reader cannot but accept that decision as logical given the circumstances and past experiences and emotional state of the character.

The writer has a distinctive style. The metaphors, for instance, are drawn from ordinary (often specifically Newfoundland) life. A man has the certainty of “a toothless bay grannie’s level of certainty, the kind that takes twenty years of card games in the church basement to curate.” John makes Iris “feel less concentrated than a tin of off-brand soup stock you only use up when you’ve cleaned the cupboards before holidays. Something to be eaten on moving day. The last bit of sustenance in the house.” A woman too depressed to eat properly speaks of every day in her life being a “storm chip day.”

Sometimes the writer veers away from narrative prose to the language of a rant. For instance, when outlining the arguments given in defense of predatory men, she rages against “the cliché trotted out the most because it’s the best/worst one of all, uttered at every girl before any training bra – ready, set, go: boys will be boys. But really, rightly, that statement should be disputed every time it is used to dismiss the very genuine and deserved complaint from girls just trying to survive as girls in spaces where even mothers are used against them. Mothers must stop competing with their daughters. Daughters do not make men mistreat them. It is not right or fair to punish daughters further out of envy. Keeping the dangerous path dangerous will not make them better women but hurt them still in the same sad ways.”

This book is not always an easy read. Some readers may be frustrated by some elements (e.g. the slow pace at the beginning; the large cast of characters, the unpunctuated dialogue in long conversations where speakers are not clearly identified). And because of its subject matter, the book is not a comfortable read. It is not for those who want just to be entertained. This book is for those willing to engage with a powerful piece of interpretive literature.

Note: Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski).… (mehr)

**Canada Reads 2020 #1**

A devastating, character-driven story that spends a lot of pages trying to get deep into the mind of a handful of very misogynistic characters. I can't speak to the verisimilitude there, for obvious reasons, but I can say the passages from the minds and perspectives of the women in their lives felt deeply true.

Some passages were absolutely heartbreaking, to the point of physical nausea.

This novel is, in large part, a #metoo novel (as the author states in the acknowledgements); she spends a lot more time on misogyny than on racism, for example, though racism is definitely present and acknowledged. But more than that, it felt like an exploration of whose lives were worthwhile, and whose lives could be entirely sacrificed for the comfort and happiness of others. In that way, the ending made perfect sense, thought it was heartbreaking.… (mehr)